Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Ebola may not be a widespread health crisis in the United States just yet, but it is creating a crisis of another kind — a crisis of confidence in the competence of the federal government.

Many Americans were shocked to learn that when Ebola-infected doctor Craig Spencer returned to New York City from Guinea, took a three-mile run, visited a coffee stand, ate at a meatball restaurant, traveled on three New York subway lines, met friends at a Brooklyn bowling alley and used an Uber sedan to return home, he was not violating the U.S. government’s Ebola protocols.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention instructs health workers returning from West Africa to monitor their health for 21 days and that “during the time that you are monitoring your health, you can continue your normal activities.” Only after a health worker’s temperature reaches 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit does the CDC advise that he or she go to a doctor, “limit your contact with other people” and “avoid public transportation.”

Continue your normal activities? It is simply unbelievable that this remains the official federal guidance for people who were exposed to the Ebola virus — especially after the CDC just came under fire for telling Dallas nurse Amber Vinson (who had been exposed to Ebola and had a 99.5-degree fever) that she was safe to fly on a plane with 134 passengers aboard because her temperature had not yet reached 100.4 degrees.

So bad has the CDC’s handling of Ebola been that the governors of New York and New Jersey had to step in and impose their own mandatory 21-day quarantine on health-care workers returning to their states from West Africa after treating Ebola patients...